As mentioned in the progress report, The alien will have a more ambiguous gender.
Let's get in to descriptions!
*-------*
DISCLAIMER! These may or may not be scenes/art in the game:
*------*
Merchant:
Level: Desert Themed
*------*
Alien:
Level: Zombie/Haunted Themed
*--------*
The poll will end on September 1st!
2023-08-11 22:58:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Heyo everyone! Here we are with v0.3. This build features Pix, our goblin character. She comes alongside Molbon, the Jungle Planet.
v0.3 update:
Major Changes:
Minor:
-------------------------------------------
The controls are untouched for this build and remain the same way they were before:
W = boost.
S = brake
A = L Roll
D = R Roll
LMB = Primary Fire
LMB(Hold) = Charge Shot
Q/LT = Ally1 Support
E/RT= Ally2 Support
-------------------------------------------
Thanks again everyone! Just a reminder, there will be no progress report this weekend, so the next report will be on August 11th. I will also be making the next character poll alongside it.
I hope you guys have fun!
-Regulus
----*EDIT*------
August 2nd, v0.3.2
Fixes:
-Pressing "Restart" in the Game Over Screen no longer loads Catiya when dying in Molbon.
----------------
2023-08-01 15:23:43 +0000 UTC View Post
Heyo everyone! Here's the final progress report for v0.3! This week is mostly final touch ups, and fixing some stuff. I'm going to overview my current thoughts on development, along with a few things to come.
Overall I feel I didn't make enough ground in the new "features" department. While the base/essential content is completed, I want there to be more buffer room for additional things. I was feeling this a while back when I was discussing potentially "getting more people on board". As a result I have been in discussion with a couple people. I'll be sure to announce whenever things are more concrete, but this should hopefully open some things up.
Even with this being the case, development workload won't quite be where I want it, but we are getting close. I will likely be doing more thinking, and reviewing for polishing up the workflow and development itself in the future. The main reason I feel that it is flawed is because there are a lot of features I would love to add, and expand on, which I seem to be having trouble getting to amongst the base workload. These features include: a few weapon types that you can choose from, shop system, expanding on the gender-bend aspect of the game, properly implementing the affinity system, and potentially adding some more "side content" type things. Of course these are second to the base content in terms of priority, as to avoid active scope creep.
ANYWAYS... there is a long road ahead, to sort these things out.
Just before I start the progress update I am going to quickly say that I will not be here for next weekend, this means aside from v0.3's launch on the 1st, I will not be doing a progress update next week.
Alright, let's get in to it!
First off I actually did some experimentation for water shaders in the upcoming Ocean planet.
(I just used one of the Catiya buildings for reference while I was adjusting the values. I wanted you to be able to see the buildings through the water as you fly by, but fade off in the darkness of the water. These cities are mostly underwater with minimal amounts emerging from the water.)
Next I made the climax animations for Pix's first Hscene. Along with this I added some minor effects, and put in the SFX
Next was setting up the proper progression for Pix's first and second Hscene. In both scenes she ends up with something in her eye, so I set it that when it happens, her eye will close for the rest of the scene.
I also made some small adjustments to the animation.
Next, I made some adjustments to the party select to work for more characters. I also set up Pix's info and respective images. (It does not work with gamepad currently).
After that I did some adjustments to the "fade out" shader (The one that makes it so an object fades out as it gets close to the camera). Basically just to allow them to have normalmaps to allow them to contain a bit more detail.
After that I did some adjustments to the boss. In the boss progress update I talked about how I wasn't too happy with it's state. I essentially changed up a few timers to speed up the pace of the fight. I added a bit more movement to some animations to make it seem less "static", and also made it so the tentacle pedals are always open during it's Idle state.
As you can see, the pedals on the side are now open. Technically they are tough to hit, but it at least gives you the option of something to shoot at in between states.
Overall I feel like the fight feels a lot more smooth now.
There were several bugs throughout the level that I fixed alongside these.
After that I wrote Pix's dialogue and set up her conversations, Hscene, and clothing options. While I was working on animations, and associated code, I decided to tinker with some other options:
The other options consist of testing how easy/hard it would be to implement other clothing options. Here is an example of putting Pix's clothes onto Lana
With some adjustments Pix's clothes fit quite well onto Lana, however it does not work quite so well the other way around. Pix's boobs and rig are just... not built for Lana's clothes.
Giving alternate clothes is not "too" difficult provided they translate well enough. I doubt this would be any kind of a key feature though. Even though it's not too difficult, it is still fairly time consuming, as I need to morph the base, and rig each clothing piece separately, along with adding them to any control parameters. It is a fun addition, and I may add stuff like this at my leisure, but don't expect it to make too much of an appearance overall.
As you could see, I changed the dialogue buttons as well. I still don't consider these to be ideal, and will likely change at some point, but I feel they are muchhh better than what was there before.
Finally, I made some last minute additions to SFX (Some boss sounds, sounds for the new lasers, etc). These will likely be placeholders for the time being. I also reworked some timing on the enemies.
There were some other things in the works this week, but I will end the report there, as it is starting to get quite lengthy.
----------------------------------------
Considering there will be no progress update next Friday, I thought I'd do a very brief rundown here in it's place. I'll give a first look on some of the water level.
We are going to try our hand at a form of "Day/Night" cycle within this map. The map will likely start during the day, and end at night. (Don't take that sea monster for granted... I doubt we will have something like that in the level)
Are peeks at some models BigFeff has put together.
-------------------------
Anyways! I'll wrap it up here, as there are still a couple things I want to do before I send a build off to the team for testing. I'll catch you all on the 1st with the release of v0.3! Hope you all have a great week!
-Regulus
2023-07-29 09:43:28 +0000 UTC View Post
Alright everyone! I have a few things to go over for this one. I did a few extra things on this last day here, and kinda got hung up on it... which is honestly probably for the better, as they were pretty necessary changes to the level... anyways, before I ramble about vague things, lets just jump into the update!
Pix has a similar set up of animations:
A cheap smug laugh.
When she's feeling really confident.
When you've pissed her off. (Her left arm gets super skinny, so I will likely make adjustments to the rig to fix that)
something like this.
She also has a "Happy" loop.
and as usual you can play with a couple clothing settings
or anti-clothing settings
Now, as mentioned, there were a few other things I did on this last day before the post.
The first thing was adding a little more foliage to fill out the "Jungle"
As a result of additional foliage. I wanted to rework some occlusion culling, and draw distances for optimization. There is a lot of stuff in the scene, so I wanted to make sure it won't impact performance too much.
Another thing I did, was a little more universal. Across the board, I made it so small enemies do not receive shadows. This will hopefully help with forms of readability for the smaller enemies in darker areas.
When they receive shadows:
When they do not receive shadows:
This pretty much sums up this week. The next week is gonna be a bit scattered, however. I have a large list of things to tie up before it finishes, so it will be a scramble. Things like fixing up timing in the level, reworking the boss a bit to feel a little less clunky, touching up some of the animations in the Hscenes, adding sound effects to several things (some of these may be placeholders for the time being), tying up the scenes and UI, and writing Pix's dialogue. I would like to do some extra stuff, but I feel like these things will eat up the week. Either way, I will be sure to let you all know how things go when the time comes!
Thanks again everyone! I'll catch you then!
-Regulus
2023-07-22 07:30:28 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey again everyone! Things have been fairly busy overall, but the spotlight in this post will be Pix's 2nd Hscene animation, along with the song previewed above.
Let's dive in! Starting with the Idle animation:
In to the basic loop:
and climax animation (Couple small touch ups still needed. Like the static balls).
Whole hoggin', or hole hoggin'???
A general "Holding" animation
and a bit more of an alternative.
There are a couple other loops. Some that require a bit of touching up as well, so I will save those for launch day.
For now, we move on to animating Pix's Conversation art, which is what you see in the Starbreed head banner.
Some recent thoughts I've had that I might try out for a bit, is to actually reuse the current boss themes for future levels. Initially I was kind of thinking each zone would have it's own boss theme, but I feel like with how short some boss fights can be if done quickly, the songs won't really have much "stick" to them across the game.
We'll see how things feels as time goes on though.
Alright everyone! I'll cut it there and move right onto the next week's stuff. I still have a good amount to cover if I want to get into some of the new features in the last week.
Thanks again everyone, and I'll catch you then!
-Regulus
Alright everyone! Sorry for the late post here, it was a bit of a scattered day, but here we go!
So, as mentioned, this week was entirely dedicated to Pix's first animation. I did have some other business related things that had me tied up a bit, but that might come up at some other point, and may not be too "exciting" to some, so I won't go in to it right now.
With that said, let's show off some of the animation, shall we?
Idle
"Prod"
She is a goblin after all.. takes a bit.
As seen above, there is the main loop
Along with a bit of an extra here.
And yes, as you see there are anal variants.
With enough Assertion, you will be able to pick her up and go to town a bit.
That'll be all I'll show off for this animation here.
This post isn't too wordy, but there has been a lot on my mind recently involving planning and the development pacing of this game. I won't dive too much in to my thoughts on it, but rest assured, keeping the current schedule(bi-monthly builds) with the current content amount is still very high priority. If anything, my thoughts may angle towards getting another hand or 2 on deck for specific things. As always, when I do come to anything decisive, I will be sure to include it on here.
Anyways... just thought I'd keep you guys somewhat up to speed on my current thoughts, vague as it is.
So I'll just jump to what the plan for next week is:
Pix's 2nd Hscene.
Next week will be dedicated to this gem. I'll be sure to catch you all next Friday with some motion! Thanks again everyone!
-Regulus
2023-07-08 09:09:38 +0000 UTC View Post
Heyo everyone! It's that time again! This week was entirely dedicated to the Jungle boss. I'll go over the process from day one, and one this boss' attack patterns and general fight will be like. There were some extra steps this time, as this boss was actually rigged, unlike any of the others. (I did actually rig the Stone Golems as well, but those didn't have any blended weights)
Before getting into it I would also like to cover a couple more things!
The poll for v0.4's character is completed! The winner will be our Shark girl along with her water level!
The next poll will take place upon the release of v0.3!
Next I will say alongside this post, Lana's Hi res art will be posted for all Groupies! Without further ado, let's get into this week's progress!
----
Before the work week began, I actually decided to use my day off to do something I think I missed on my scheduling, so I animated Pix's in-lobby idle, and decided to add a "Hover" animation to the characters in the hub.
The first day was dedicated to.. well... rigging. Blender isn't completely foreign to me, but I definitely wouldn't call myself seasoned by any stretch. Getting used to using Blender slowly will help with things that may come in the future, so I saw this fight as a great opportunity to ease in.
Upon importing I decided it would be best to do all associated animations in Unity itself. While the interface for doing so is a bit more of a headache, it would allow me to easily make adjustments on the fly. Which I knew I would be needing to do.
As mentioned... Pigman is not the boss of the Jungle, and this is why.
The boss for the most part will have fairly simple patterns (3 distinct attack types), 2 of which will leave itself vulnerable to attack.
The first is seen at the head of this post. The plant will open it's tentacles, and lunge at you, one at a time. This is it's most vulnerable state, as all of it's tentacles will be open, leaving the gem exposed to attack.
The second is called "carasol"
It will open one at a time to fire an "Ancient Laser" at you, in the same way the previous ruins enemies do. This attack is rather long, leaving you to play a sort of "Chicken" game with the laser timer if you want to get the best damage you can.
The third attack will spin it's tentacles in circles, forcing the player to the top of the screen to avoid being hit. In this state, the tentacles are not vulnerable, though this may change as development continues.
Finally, if you destroy all tentacles, the boss will use a last ditch effort to consume you.
This main core is the real source of this boss's health. Damage here is critical. If you do not manage to destroy it in it's vulnerable state, it will grow its tentacles back.
Upon destroying the core, the boss will be defeated.
That should cover this week.
Overall, if I am being completely honest, I am not happy with the boss in it's current state. There are things I don't like about it's pacing. In theory, I liked the idea of destroying the tentacles to kill the core gem, but there are some stages I feel like just... don't feel fluent enough. Before this build's release I will likely be revisiting the boss and making adjustments and tweaks to it. I already have several ideas planned for fixing the problems I have it with, but they may have to wait a couple weeks.
The reason they may need to wait is because the next couple weeks will be Hscene time! That's right, and I'll give a sneak peek to the Hscene as well!
Alright everyone! We are entering the 2nd month of v0.3. I feel like there is still a ton I want to get done before it's release, let's hope it's a good month^^ haha. Catch you all next week for this image in motion along with perhaps a preview of the 2nd Hscene.
-Regulus
2023-07-01 02:32:10 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey everyone! This week was a bit frustrating, but progress was still made. Unfortunately there was a setback that crippled the pace a bit, so I was unable to get everything I wanted to get done. I made the discovery that upon creating the scene for the Jungle level, I must have done it in a weird way in which all my prefabs(Objects that I would use in multiple scenes) got duplicated, so all changes I made in the Jungle would not reflect on the actual prefabs. This resulted in me having to reconstruct these objects.
Anyways! Let's get onto what WAS done. As you can see above, the opening cut scene sequence has been put in.
I'll quickly state that some names have been put in:
Player will be defaulted to the name "Aether"
Goblin is currently named "Pix"
Jungle planet is currently named "Molbon"
The "Help me" sequences were added along with their animations. This also means that I have put in all of the dialogue transmission sequences along with it.
I also added the function to the pillars, and Pix's explosive satchels.
There is a little more to dive in to here. The Golems are impervious to normal fire from the player. They are treated as "Obstacles". With the introduction of their rocks, and these pillars there is a new type of obstacle implemented. Labelled "Player Obstacle", it is a form of attack generated via obstacles that can hurt enemies. (As you can see, the last pillar kills a turret) The golems ARE vulnerable to "Player Obstacle" damage. The specification of this is relevant for Pix's abilities:
Her active ability is an explosive satchel.
This satchel has a massive AoE, and the rather hefty cost of Thrust. This satchel will detonate on impact with Obstacles, or enemies. It can also be detonated early by shooting it with your laser. As you can see in this gif, it is capable of killing the golems without the use of an obstacle. This is because the blast from Pix's satchel deals "Player Obstacle" damage.
Pix's Passive is "Scouting"
With Pix in your party you will be able to see a total for Boss's health.
Next, if you're wondering who Pix is shit-talking in the previous gifs, it's none other than a returned old friend.
Some other things worth mentioning is that I put in the health packs, added colliders to obstacles, and added Pix's "flavor text" to Catiya, and Raptura if she is in your party.
With the addition of Pix's abilities I have decided to rework the pace of the Thrust meter a bit. Things have been slowed down. It will drain slower from boosting/braking, but it will also regenerate much slower as well. This allows for more variance in "power" of the player's ability. In Pix's case, even if the satchel took 100% of the thrust meter, it regenerated so fast that you could still throw those satchels out like candy. I want them to be a big cost, but big blast. Thrust will likely see balance adjustments as development continues, and more abilities are introduced.
Unfortunately I could not get around to polishing up some of the menus, and starting an options menu due to the prefab incident, but hopefully I will be able to cover these in the next "feature/mechanic" week, or I will see if I can do some over the weekend. It may have to wait though, as the next week is dedicated to our Jungle boss.
You might be wondering "Are we really fighting Pigman again?", and the answer is... well... no. In fact this boss might be the biggest pain in the ass yet to make :P. BigFeff is scratching his head with the modelling as we speak.
This will involve much more in-depth rigging than I am used to, but it's a challenge we have decided to take on. I will do a bit more of a deep-dive once it is completed and raring to go. Until then, it's going to be a busy week ahah.
Thanks everyone! I'll catch you all then!
-Regulus
Heyo everyone! This week was dedicated to the new (and old) enemies. I'll show off what has been put it in via the chronological order of the level. Let's get right into it!
As briefly mentioned in the previous post, the level will mostly start with familiar enemies. The same ships that attacked your homeworld of Catiya.
Along with the return of this dastardly devil.
Upon passing the first section you will find yourself fading into the thicket.
This is where we find our first new enemy type. Set upon the logs these strange enemies hone in on you with laser sights before unleashing an unblockable, high damage beam. You cannot deflect these beams.(Visuals are subject to change)
Under the thicket, things get a little hectic, as you find both new and old ships, and in many cases they don't get along with each other, opening fire on one another.
Upon exiting the thicket you are ambushed by an overwhelming force. Luckily this force is demolished by a conveniently timed... boulder?
The source of these rocks were giant golems, risen to guard the ruins. They do not see you as an ally anymore than the opposing force.
Upon entering the interior of some small ruins you will be surprised with some sentries. These turrets shoot the same kind of beam as the tree dwellers in the thicket, labelled "Ancient Lasers"
Once exiting the ruins you find some dogfighting going on between the ruins and Nova's forces.
Near the end of the level you are faced with the final ambush of Nova's forces.
There is likely to be some tweaking and visual polishing to be had here. There are still some assets for me to put in. Some vines, a bit of ground foliage, and a few other things.
Hopefully these things will be touched up on in the upcoming week where I will be implementing some of the level's "mechanics". This will essentially just entail shooting some explosive satchels that the goblin will have set up for you in specific places of the level.
Which brings us to what is planned for the next week. I need to put in the transmission dialogue, those satchels, any sequences to play along with the Goblin's narrative, and the intro cutscene. Once that is fleshed out, I will be diving into the Goblin's abilities. I have some concept ideas for her abilities, but we will see how it feels once it's in.
If I manage to get those done in a timely manner I'll try to jump in on some polish of UI for dialogue/party select, or setting up the base of an "Options Menu".
Alright everyone! That should sum up this week's progress report. Thanks again for the lovely support for Starbreed! Catch you all next with with some more cool stuff!
-Regulus
2023-06-16 22:46:06 +0000 UTC View PostHeyo everyone! I hope you all had fun with Raptura, and Lana! Feedback is always appreciated, so feel free to leave a comment on the post if you have any thoughts ^^. With that said, this post will be focusing on the Jungle to come. Let's jump right in!
So the base level layout has been finished, but do keep in mind there is likely polish to be done on the texture, and foliage end of things. This layout is mostly to give a nice timeline for enemies, and the progress of the level.
To start off you will be in the dense jungle. Lots of trees in the way. This area will be populated by basic ship enemies. Much like the ones you saw on Catiya. There will be very minimal ruins in this area, mostly just foliage and trees.
(Quite unpolished): You will duck under a thicket of trees and have to weave between the roots and branches cutting across the creek.
After flying under the thicket for a while, you will emerge out the other side, and will be cut off in an ambush by the ships. This doesn't go as they planned however, as it seems they will have awoken some ancient guardians of the ruins.
Then from here you will be faced with the outskirts of the ruins. A skirmish is taking place between the ruins' guardians and the invaders. You, and your goblin companion will find yourselves in the crossfire of it all.
After the first segment of the ruins there will be a small section of pillars. The pillars will be targetable by the player. Shooting them will cause them to collapse on nearby enemies. Doing this may raise the goblins affinity given the circumstances.
Once past the pillars, you will come upon an altar with a temple of sorts behind it.
Passing through this will land you in an encased space of ruins.
This hallway is quite short, and you find yourself in a bit of predicament, which will be resolved by the helping hand of your companion.
Emerging from here you will find yourself in the thick of what seems to be an ancient city. The enemies here will likely be more sparse on the "space aircraft" type, and a bit more heavy on the ruins guardian side.
Passing through this final section will find you in the last passageway into the boss fight.
The actual arena/environment the boss will be fought in is still to be determined, but the level outline is all here. In a couple weeks we will likely be reviewing things and polishing up some of the visuals. That basically sums up this week though.
Before I close out and talk about what's coming next week, here's a little peek at AmHidden's Goblin's transmission art:
Alright!
In the next week, I will be focusing on the enemies. Their placement, their AI, and the works. This may be a bit of a tough one due to some of the coming enemy designs, but we'll see how it goes ahaha. Thanks everyone for the support! And here's to the development of v0.3!
-Regulus
Alright everyone! Here we go! Let the battle begin!
Shark Girl:
Planet - Ocean Planet
Merchant Girl:
Planet: Desert Planet
The poll will conclude on June 30th!
2023-06-02 21:35:39 +0000 UTC View Post
Heyo everyone! Today is the rollover onto the new build, and with that, a new poll will begin for VIP ($10+) patreons.
Poll here:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/v0-4-character-83979977
We have our sharkgirl, and the new merchant up for voting. The sharkgirl is likely to represent an Ocean level (no.. not underwater), and the merchant will likely represent a desert level. The poll will be posted alongside this post.
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Now for the rundown on our state with the Jungle level, and the Goblin! There is not a whole lot in terms of images, but I'll cover what I can.
The goblin will likely be named once we really dive into things. Since the time of the polls there has been a minor rework to her. Her visuals remain in-tact, however her demeanour has been adjusted.
(Unshaded) - The goblin will be a bit more of a "screws loose" kind of character.
As for the Jungle level, asset creation is in progress.
The atmosphere may be tuned, and the level will be broken up into a few "Sections".
The plan is that you find the dense jungle littered by the same invading forces you saw on Catiya. Upon passing through a thicket you stumble upon ruins, which are much disturbed. The ruin's "guardians", and defence mechanisms are in full force to fend off the invading army.
Because of this, you, and your new goblin companion will be stuck in the middle of a fray between 2 factions for the latter half of the level.
I won't dive too much deeper as most of the other things are quite subject to change.
This upcoming week is going to be dedicated to setting up the atmosphere, the layout of the level, and placing all main props/structures.
That should pretty much sum out our spot on the new level! I hope you all enjoyed the new build, and I hope you are looking forward to this next one! Thanks!
-Regulus
2023-06-02 21:35:19 +0000 UTC View Post
Heyo everyone, the time has come for v0.2. There's a couple things I will reiterate here as it will be the pinned post:
There are a lot of new features/mechanics involved here that I would typically do over the course of a couple builds, but many of them work off of each other, so I felt it necessary to get the ground work for all of this in. That being said, certain aspects will not be fully fleshed out (Like the dialogue layout/system, and affinity system).
There are a couple sections that might feel a bit janky, like the snapping to a new rail in-game (You will likely notice this if you go through the canyon in Raptura, just before the boss, your will "snap" onto the rail, and it is quite jarring.) I have a projected solution to make this more smooth, but it will likely need to wait until v0.3.
Anyways! Enough with the excuses! Onto the Changelog:
v0.2 Changelog:
MAJOR:
Minor:
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That should cover the jist of it. As mentioned, the default keyboard controls have been adjusted as following:
W = boost.
S = brake
A = L Roll
D = R Roll
LMB = Primary Fire
LMB(Hold) = Charge Shot
New Keys:
Q/LT(Hold) = Ally1 Support
E/RT(Hold) = Ally2 Support
-------------------------------------------
Thanks everyone for the support! There is still much work to be done, but I hope this gives you a nice idea on how things have been progressing.
I will still be doing a post tomorrow going over the plans for the Goblin and the jungle! I will also be setting up the poll for the next character as well.
Catch you all then!
-Regulus
2023-06-02 02:40:12 +0000 UTC View Post
Heyo everyone! This week was mostly dedicated to getting Lana's conversation art all animated up. There are some things I want to go over before launch, as there is quite a lot involved in this build in terms of code/mechanics ahaha.
Let's start with some animations! Lana has a few different "emotion" animations, so let's start from the top:
Neutral:
Happy:
Smug:
Shocked:
Angry:
Thinking:
Shy:
Lana will have a couple other extra animations. One is the flashing at the top of the post, along with one other flash.
With all of these, Lana will also have "clothing states"
Typically the flashing and clothing states would be rewards from affinity, but in this build they will likely be available after completing Raptura.
I did manage to do up most of the tying up for the build as well.
-I fixed up some issues with character's party system involving them coming in and asking for assistance.
-Fixed up some issues in the scorescreen involving party members
-Added an "Affinity" display to the character's conversation, and her party select.
-Added SFX to Lana's Hscenes
-I added the final scripts with the dialogue system to check affinity, and added flags for clothing states. (so the character's clothing states will save)
-I reworked more on mouse and gamepad sensitivity. I found an issue in the code where I didn't properly compensate for varying framerates.
2 more significant things I did was:
-Even though I said I was going to remove Affiinity requirements for this build, I actually decided to add a very light requirement on Lana's 2nd Hscene. You will unlock her first scene upon finishing Raptura, but her 2nd scene will require 10 affinity. This exists mostly for testing purposes. I want to make sure that the affinity requirement system that I implemented functions properly. This means you will likely need to do an extra mission or 2 with Lana in your party before you get that scene.
-I changed the default keyboard keybinds in v0.2.
W = boost
S = brake
D = R Barrel Roll
A = L Barrel Roll
Q (LTrigger)= Ally1 support
E (RTrigger)= Ally2 support
(Custom keybinds will still not be in v0.2, but I will hopefully get around to them soon).
Just as a review for v0.2, there was a lot of new things I tried to tackle with this build: the party system, affinity system, new level mechanics, saving information. I would usually try and do these over the course of a couple builds, but they kind of work off each other in many ways, so I felt it kind of necessary. As a result some of these features will not be completely fleshed out yet, and mostly just have the core scripts in place to give function to the others. Namely the affinity system, and the dialogue system.
So just know there there will still be work done on those 2 things, and will not have the best representation in v0.2 despite still existing.
---------------------------------
And that leaves us with... "what's left?". Unfortunately there is still actually a few things I need to do. I'm hoping to tie things up in the next day or 2 here to give the team at least a little time for testing before the initial release here.
-I will be adding an "auto-save" whenever entering the hub, along with an option to wipe data on the main menu. (This won't be the full save system, but just something to carry it along during development)
-I need to do some polishing on Lana's first Hscene.
-Changes to some of the player character's coloring in some Hscenes.
-Make charge shots give a proper "hit" visual to enemies if they do not die on impact
-Put Lana's new conversation art in place for party select
-Add ability "icons" for her in party select
-Adding the scenes to Unity's compiling list. (This is basically a non-step.. it's actually just pressing a couple buttons)
With that I will pack it up and send it to the team, and get things ready for the 1st.
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Alright everyone! Thanks for checking in! That will do it for this update, and I guess next time I post will be in about 6 days with the release of v0.2! I hope all the new stuff will breathe new life in to the game for everyone. Adios!
-Regulus
Heyo again everyone! The 2nd scene of this build has been finished. Along with this we have made some ground in the planning of the level we will be doing for v0.3. I believe I mentioned before, but the level will be a Jungle. I won't dive too much into that right now, as I will go over all of that after v0.2 is finished up and released. There won't be too much text this time around considering it was all just rigging and animation, much like last week. I'll cut to the chase and show the final product this time around. I will also go over some thoughts I had been looming over involving Hscenes this week though once I showcase the animations.
After breaking things up, meshing, rigging, and setting up the morph parameters, I started off with the basic loops.
Lana starts off fairly timid.
After this she takes a bit of a breather.
This is where the split will be. I may go in a but more on the splits after this showcase, as I do want them to be a bit more than a simple "click what one you want"
Either she will remain timid, or she will double down.
Some of the climax animations are a bit more elaborate this time around.
pt.2 (same animation. I just split them for size sake)
There are actually a couple other things I may do with this animation in the future.
I'm going to dive a bit into the things I've been thinking about this week for Hscene plans. I want to create a structure that is simple to understand, but is also interesting enough to make HScenes not feel "in the way" of the gameplay, or vice-versa.
I talked before about how I want to integrate the affinity system into the Hscenes. I showed a little bit of this in the report covering the basics of dialogue. Here is my current plan for unlocking Hscenes:
After Finishing Raptura:
Aff 0: Unlock Lana and her 1st Hscene.
Aff 25: Unlock new dialogue, and 2nd Hscene.
(later build:
Aff 50: Unlock new dialogue, Raptura's 2nd level, and Lana's 3rd Hscene.
Aff 75: Unlock new dialogue, Lana's 4th Hscene.
Aff 100: Likely unlock ending options with Lana, and possibly impreg ending.)
It may be rearranged so that 75 is 3rd Hscene, and 100 is 4th, but I'll tackle that when the build comes.
There is also the question what "Player Affinity" will do. I have mentioned it briefly before. You can get affinity with yourself. With these points you can allocate them into 1 of 2 stats of your choosing. (These are not finalized yet, but they are what I will likely be building from)
Assertion/Masc: 1 point = 1% Max Thrust, up to 100.
Resolve/Femme: 1 point = +1% Max Health, up to 100.
Aside from the stat increase, these stats will give you some additional options in Hscenes. (ex. The "doubledown" loop I mentioned earlier would likely have an "Assertion" requirement. In Lana's first Hscene, "Anal" would likely be an "Assertion" requirement as well. I would like to add the ability to change the main character to a female body type in this 2nd scene at a later date, which would have a Femme requirement.)
These requirements are meant to give some more "character" to your playthrough, but with that said you can still reach 100 in both femme and masc stats. I feel it will also give players reason to go back and watch old Hscenes for new animation options. I don't want this to feel like a "grind", or a way to "pad" content, but rather to feel like there is more mileage/significance to each Hscene in comparison to SpunkStock. It's going to be a bit of a balancing act, but I want to make sure that it still feels natural, and fun to progress in the game.
THAT BEING SAID. In this build, these requirements will likely not be in place, and everything will be available upon unlocking Lana. These are plans that I am starting to hone in on and am starting to feel pretty good about. It will really come down to the execution of it.
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Anyways... that should sum things up. In the upcoming week I will be animating Lana's Conversation portrait. Dialogue will likely look pretty similar to SpunkStock.
That's not necessarily everything though. There are still some pretty important things I need to tie up before the release. Either way, next week should be the last Progress Report before v0.2's launch.
Thanks everyone! I'll catch you then, have a good week ^^.
-Regulus.
Heyo everyone! There's a good amount to cover here, but it's been another busy week. What you hear above is a section of the boss theme for Raptura. Also, the poll has concluded and the next character is confirmed to be our Goblin! Name TBD
Anyways! On to the progress report.
Despite this week being mostly technical, there are some nice visuals to show off. Here we go!
First thing that was done was finishing off some loose ends with the Raptura level, and the boss. Previously the rail systems merging was a bit shoddy, and boss patterns were fairly buggy. I polished those up. I also implemented Lana's scripted support during the boss fight.
As long as you do not fail to give Lana support when she needs it, she will help you in the first phase of the boss fight (Not a lot, but she will take potshots.)
Lana is a "fighter" so I would like her to be very much a part of this level's combat. Future characters may not have this trait.
Here's a bit of a rundown on something that may not have been clarified:
Lana's involvement with Raptura is static. Whether Lana is unlocked/locked, in your party, or not in your party, she will be present, and have the same scripted events in this level. Regardless of her position, if you fail to assist her, she will be considered "defeated" and will no longer take part in her events (party member or not) for the rest of the level. This will have more significance as more party members come along.
Which leads on to the "assist" part. Here is Lana's animation while asking for assistance
The party system was a bit expanded on with this. Every single level will have a "scripted" help, and an "RNG" help sequence. The scripted help will always be the character featured in the level. (Lana will ALWAYS ask for support just before the boss if you take the main route, and the Grunt on Catiya will always ask for help.), but there is 1 more location a character can ask for help. This is an "RNG" help sequence. In this sequence it will randomly pull a character that is considered "available". This means it may be 1 of your party members, or the planet's character.
Because there is 2 "help" sequences, there has been an additional sequence added to Catiya.
If you have no party members (which is guaranteed on the first playthrough), then this sequence will not exist.
Yep, this means even though Catiya was done first, you can still go back and replay it with future party members. You may even get some flavor text that you wouldn't otherwise get.
And if you haven't noticed, there is something extra with the enemies. They now have a "charge up" animation. This is meant as an indicator for when they are firing rather than them just flying out at you. The enemy lasers are also much slower.
Aside from that, I made some changes to the purple claw enemies. They no longer do damage to you on impact, instead they will slowly drain your health the longer they are on you. They will be quite a bit less lethal now.
I made the charging reticle move a little bit more to be a bit more intuitive.
One other thing I did was add an "innate" cooldown on your primary fire. To 99% of players this does not mean much, but previously, auto-clickers had no limits, as you could shoot as fast as you could click(ignoring the 3 shot burst) technically.
After these touch ups I moved on to some of the Menuing in the hub.
Basically this is just to properly describe the character's Passive and Active depending on their slot. It seems simple enough, but the significance of this is mostly in writing the actual scripts to calculate it easily for all future characters. (Writing scripts for future use).
Party members will appear on the score screen, and receive affinity if they are still "alive" by the end of it. At the moment, I am rolling with party members not actually having a health bar. There could be some interesting application if there was, but I feel like the simplicity of them not having bars may be a bit more streamlined. This may change in the future though.
In general I added all instances of Affinity gaining. (Choosing a route in Raptura, and conversation dialogue.) I did a few other things as well including scripts and flags for conversations, and putting in several new SFX, but I feel like this post has gone on long enough.
Let's wrap this post up. There's still a lot of loose ends I need to tie up here, but those will have to wait, as it's time to get back to animating!
Lana's 2nd Hscene is on deck, and he's a first look at what it will be like.
Thanks everyone! It was thanks to a lot of your feedback that many of these changes are in place. I'll catch you all next week with some motion to this new scene^^.
-Regulus
Heyo again everyone! This week has been another busy one. Usually I try to give myself a couple weeks to do these animations, but with the new workflow I am going to be trying to fit them in a week for pacing's sake. I don't think this will effect quality (though I suppose I'm not necessarily the only judge of that ahah). Anyways! Let's get in to the progress update!
The first thing I did was break the image up into layers as always. There are a nice mix of expressions this time around.
After breaking it up, the next day I meshed and rigged the full model.
I also played a bit more with IK settings on certain instances. This is a time saver, and looks better than some of the other methods I was using in Spunkstock.
Once all the bones were set up, I moved onto Control Parameters. For those who are curious what I mean when I say this, I'll dive a bit into it here.
When I create the mesh from the first day, I have these parameters in mind. I set 4 points of "head direction", and more the vertices to match the corresponding direction. This way if I want the morph to happen in the future, I can simply adjust the parameter, and it will replicate my morphing set up.
You might be asking, whats the point of this if you have it rigged with bones? Bones morph and create movement too. Well this allows me to do any form of perspective movement WITHOUT animating bones. We will add this movement to the rig movement when it comes time to animate.
Having 2 separate types of movement can add a pretty fluent dynamic, especially when playing with perspective,
In this instance I created a "Body Direction" parameter. What I made this do is essentially have the pelvis "fold over" her tummy, and flick up/down. With it on, you can see her pelvic bone fold above, and cover the belly button, but once I remove the body direction's keyframes, her entire torso becomes much more static. The bones are still offset to give it some movement, but the body direction parameter gives it that extra level of "dynamics"
Once these parameters were set, it's animation time. I started with the base loops.
This time there's a bit of other action.
There is another animation I won't be showing here, but these are the base loops. There is one big thing I want to address though. At the moment Hscenes are just "click the loops" until the scene is done. There will likely be a form of overhaul at a certain point in terms of how they are set up. There is still a decent chance they will have dialogue in the scenes, and something along the lines of requirements for certain loops. There is still some brainstorm I am going to need to do when I get the chance. I just am not quite feeling the coherency quite yet. At least not enough for implementation.
This is probably the better set up for now anyways with how early the game is, and with how progression really isn't in place yet.
Anyways! The next day I focused on the climax animations and the next was overall integration (basic UI etc).
With that this scene wrapped up for now. I was hoping to jump right into the 2nd hscene, however due to some circumstances, there may be some rearranging in scheduling. This upcoming week's progress report may not be quite as uniform, but we will see. I am going to be jumping into the "polish" week now, and address the next animations in the coming weeks after.
This means I'm likely going to be addressing all loose ends I can think of. This will likely include finishing up the initial look and set up for the dialogue system, along with writing the scripts for conversation animations. There is also a LOT of polish to flesh out in the gameplay department. There are several SFX I need to whip up, along with finishing off the core of the affinity system.
There is a decent chance the affinity system will have no real purpose (or extremely little) in this build. You will still probably be able to build affinity and see when/where it may increase, but the applications will likely be yet to come.
Anyways! That should do it. I'll catch you all next week with some technical updates/polish. (maybe some animation depending on some things.)
-Regulus
Heyo everyone! It's that time of week again. This week was quite a grind. The base of the boss fight has been started, and completed. All animations, attacks, 2 phases, and linked up to the end of the level properly. Let's dive into the report!
I started up with taking BigFeff's model which was done up the week prior. Animations were first on the list.
Idle:
along with the intro:
Phase 1 has 4 different attacks. I will bring us into "In-game" territory for these.
Rocks:
Rocks cannot be deflected with a barrel roll, but they can be shot out of the sky.
Napalm Bombs + Finger Beam:
These are separate attacks, but they were side by side in the gif so I figured I'd display them both.
Laser Hail:
After charging up, he will unleash a hail of lasers.
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Beating phase 1 will bring you to a bit of a scenic transition. (Along with a health pack to revitalize you.)
Phase 2 animations are still a little rough around the edges, but the function has all been completed.
In phase 2 he will still use his "Laser Hail"
He will also use the rocks, except they are from the ceiling this time. Hanging low will generally avoid this one.
Finally, not as a part of his RNG attacks, he has a scripted attack at 2/3 health, and 1/3 health.
This animation is a bit unfinished.
The attack is at locked intervals as he is essentially untargetable while doing this move. (With unlucky RNG, it would be silly if he used this like.. 4 times in a row).
When you beat him he loses his moustache... truly a humiliating defeat.
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As you can see in some of those gifs, I added names to the intercoms, along with colors to them (the player probably won't be called "Player" lol).
In between working on the boss stages, I did some fixing up on things like the charge shot, and some other buggy things.
With the rocks coming in, I decided to add a few rocks to the landscape in areas as well
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I gotta say.. this boss kicked my ass this week in terms of time hahah. There is still some polishing to do with some of the sequencing (I'll likely be working on that in a later week (hopefully!), but I'm glad I got it all done from start to finish. Overall this was a massive difference from the simplicity of the first boss. There is a lot of polishing I may be trying to cram into the last week of this build, but we'll see how it goes.
One other thing I did early one was dig a bit into an issue that was brought up prior to v0.1's release. The importing of animations were oddly dark. This problem is actually present in v0.1. I'm not sure if it is a bug with AnyPortrait, or it is a strange setting that I have on, but I made some adjustments to their shader so it displays at the right brightness now.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
This applies to the Pod scene as well.
Alright! That pretty much does it for this week's progress! It was a busy one, but the heart racing every once in a while is good for you! (I think?)
This upcoming week I will be focusing completely on the 1st Hscene.
Here's a quickly put together preview of the scene to come.
Thanks everyone for believing in us, and in Starbreed! I hope you all have a wonderful week, and I'll catch you all next time!
-Regulus
2023-04-29 04:41:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Heyo everyone! There isn't much of an "overview" to go over today, other than thanks everyone who tuned in to Hentai Expo! It was a blast ^^. I didn't quite get everything I wanted done this week unfortunately. I had run into a few complications on the last day, but I at least got the base down for the things I need. Let's get into those now:
Right out the gate I added colliders to obstacles along with applying the proper fading shader to applicable props.
A similar clip was in last week, but the shaders were not applied yet, so the bar clipped through the camera.
Next was working on the necessary menu components. I added flags to completing the level, to properly unlock Lana after completing Raptura. After unlocking her, she will appear in the hub.
Raptura is also put in to the level select. The "!" and Distress signal icons will now be removed upon completing the mission for the first time.
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Those things weren't necessarily new features/mechanics, but they were necessary gaps I needed to fill before starting on them.
The implementation for the charge shot is now in.
The SFX still need to be put in, and there are a couple small quirks to clear up with it, but it is fully functional. It took me a bit longer than expected to get all of it working haha.
Next up was implementing the base of the party system. Some of the layout is subject to change, but I mostly just wanted to get the core scripts in place for this to be ready by v0.2.
You may see there is a "Passive" and "Active" section. Each party member will bring a passive to the table along with 1 active.
At the moment Lana's active is "Aerial Assist". With it, she will fly in, and shoot random enemies. Party's active abilities will be bound to a key between "slot1" and "slot2".
Using their active, as you can see, will drain the player's "Thrust" gauge(same resource used for boosting). A choice I dwelled on was either having them on a cooldown, or use resource. I ultimately decided to have them use resources. I think this will be best for fluidity's sake. It may be subject to change, but I quite like the feel of it right now.
Lana's passive is "Dynamics". It reduces thrust consumption by 30%. (Considering actives use Thrust, this is a much more valuable resource than before). This will allow you to use your ally's supports more, and/or boost.
The active and passive are bound natively to each character. Different characters will offer their own unique active, and passive.
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After that, I did something I should have previously. We changed the worm's tail to be blue. Blue signifies weak points on Raptura, and will be reflected in the boss fight as well. Another thing that was done was adjustments to the scaling of the texturing on the ground, and putting in the boss's intercom portrait.
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The next section was unfortunately the part I wasn't quite able to get done in time. This was the implementation of the affinity system. I got the foundation all written up, but the actual implementation is yet to come.
The start of the ground work for this was to actually create the base of the Save system/scripts. These scripts are essentially what will store the character's affinity. I wrote these scripts along with the calling scripts. Luckily this is pretty much all of the leg work.
Essentially this is going to be the script to get called in every single situation that grants affinity. All I really need to do is go to the situations that need it, and call this.
The places it will get called are planned to be:
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>First time entering a dialogue tree with a character. Dialogue options can grant affinity.
>Allies in your party upon level completion will receive a flat increase to affinity
>Saving allies from a "help me!" scenario in missions will grant affinity
>Various events within a character's level. (In Raptura you can gain affinity depending on if you follow Lana's instructions or not.)
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In almost every one of these cases, in the scenario you do NOT get affinity for the ally, you will instead get affinity for "yourself". (I will go into what "affinity with yourself" means in the future). Both types of affinity will be beneficial, so there is no real "wrong" dialogue options, or level routes to choose.
Even if you do not get the desired affinity, gaining affinity is something that is repeatable via playing missions.
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As a follow up, I also set up the base for the dialogue system with PixelCrusher's plugin.
The system just kind of... exists right now, as I plan to get more in depth with it once I animate Lana Kova's conversation art (Like in SpunkStock).
The set up is as follows (These dialogue sections will likely be completely optional, but can give some perks):
"Romance" is essentially the "Hscenes" options, and "Talk" is where you can engage in several conversations with them throughout the game to gain affinity.
In the full game, each character is planned to have at least 4 Hscenes from the "Romance" section. In this build however, Lana will only have 2.
The affinity requirement may be lifted for this build, as the requirements will likely be catered to a full game's worth of progress.
In the "Talk" section, Each character will have 4 core conversations that are unlocked at different stages of affinity. The first time you engage in these conversations you will be eligible to gain extra affinity from your dialogue options. (You can engage in these conversations again at anytime to explore other dialogue routes, but you will only receive the bonus affinity the first time).
On the other fronts, the boss is almost finished being modelled, Lana's 1st Hscene is nearing completion along with her in-game H-transmission cut in.
In the upcoming week the focus will almost be entirely focused on the implementation of the boss and his phases. If there is any opening in time I will hopefully be able to finish off the implementation of affinity system that I was cut short on this week. I'm pretty excited to present the boss, as this one is a bit of a 1-up from the last one. I'll catch you all next week with it!
Thanks everyone! I think this build will be quite the jump from v0.1 in terms of improvements. It will hopefully start to fill in the questions on the direction of the game.
-Regulus
2023-04-22 02:35:56 +0000 UTC View Post
Heyo everyone! Quite a bit got done this week, and I'm excited to share! I'll also follow up on something I mentioned in a previous post, and that's Hentai Expo (which SpunkStock will be appearing in).
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Let's start with the Hentai Expo. On April 15, 2023 at 6:00 PM PST it will be live! This year the livestream is going to be a whopping 5 hours long. Showcasing tons of NSFW games. The event is done by DLSite, and has hosts Highgai, and Shibuya Kaho returning.
https://twitter.com/Hentai_Expo/status/1645722961251561472
This post will give times in other time zones, and where to catch the livestream. I recommend it, it's a lot of fun, especially if you can take part in the chat on their discord!
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Now on to the progress report!
The main focus this week was on enemies, and finishing off the structure of the level.
I have also filled out the backgrounds and area a little more. (There's a lot more going on with the environment now ahah)
Our large enemies that have a specific weak point (Weak points will be highlighted in blue in the actual build), but will net you quite a lot of points if you manage to take them down.
Upon entering the tunnel, visibility will go down, and the area will be lit up by purple lights. These lights are destructible, so you may want to watch your aim lest you be flying in the dark.
In the main area, there will be many small enemies to get in your way.
You will be met with these intrusive "escort" enemies who may restrict your area of movement.
You receive your ultimatum at this moment. Boost to make the tube rotation, and escape the ships, or be lured into their ambush. (Ya, I know, you clip through the side. This will likely be fixed up ahah)
If you do NOT catch the pipe, you will be faced with a large ambush, and Lana will be forced to blow her cover in an attempt to save you as seen above. This route isn't necessarily all bad however, as it is technically faster.
However, if you do catch the pipe, you will be able rendezvous with Lana, and fight alongside her through the canyons.
Lana will shoot at enemies she passes by. Any kills she gets will be tallied onto your score.
Allies fighting alongside you may not always be the case in future levels, but as Lana is a merc and more of a "fighter", I figured it would fit well if she's a little more a part of the action.
Of course along side the enemies, I also put together the layout for the transmission dialogue as you saw in some of those gifs.
Of course there's a little banter.
Health packs were also added, and the base level is pretty much all good to go with the exception of the transition into the boss.
As for the boss, we have gone over some of the base concepts for him.
We have the phases and attack patterns mostly planned out, but things are still quite early on this front.
Which leads to what the plans are for next week. The modelling for the boss will take place, along with a focus on new mechanics/features. This means I will be looking into adding the game's "Charge Shot", and adding the actual "Party System". I am hoping that upon finishing Raptura, you will have unlocked Lana as a party member, and can bring her on any mission (Including if you replay Catiya). There is also still a tiny bit left to do with Raptura's level, like adding fading shaders on buildings that collide with the camera, adding colliders to objects on the route, and some balancing with textures.
Along with those changes will likely come the baseline of the Affinity system, and some working in the menuing/level select. I want to get as much of the new mechanics/features done during this week in order to fit in with the scheduling.
Anyways! I believe that sums up this report. Thanks again everyone, and I'll catch you all next week for some news on some of the new technical things coming alongside this build!
-Regulus
2023-04-14 21:30:53 +0000 UTC View Post
Let's give some better examples of both characters!
Sharkgirl:
Type of planet will likely be an ocean planet.
Goblin:
Type of planet is still undetermined.
Alright everyone! This poll will conclude on May 5th! Get your votes in!
2023-04-07 15:38:23 +0000 UTC View Post
Here we are! The first week of the moon base. For now I will call it Raptura. This level will present our first ally. For the time being we will be calling her Lana Kova. (names are subject to change). This week I set up the structure for the level, along with obstacles and buildings, and I reworked some things involving aiming. As you can see above, there are 2 more characters showing their faces. Both are currently unnamed, so I'll simply be calling them "Sharkgirl" and "Goblin" for now. I will go a bit more in detail on them and the upcoming poll at the end of the post!
Due to feedback, early on I looked a little more in to aiming. I tried a few solutions, but ultimately settled on a final one. I made some algorithm adjustments to compensate for the FOV/perspective. The lasers will now shoot where the last green reticle is regardless of distance, even on the edges of the screen. This also allows me to let the lasers shoot muuchhhh farther. You can shoot things from very far away now, and with much better accuracy.
Another adjustment I made to the aiming was an "assist" of sorts. If an enemy or missile is very close to the player, if the green reticle is over them, your aim will snap to them regardless of your ship's angle. This should help with aiming at awkward distances.
I'm hoping these changes will remedy any issues with aiming people had in the last build. On top of this I made some small adjustments: the FOV has been reduced slightly, and laser speed has been increase by quite a lot.
Now on to the moonbase, Raptura. These next 2 gifs are fairly large, so they might take a bit to load, but they are essentially the intro sequence.
(The pigman is a placeholder for the time being. This level's boss will be speaking there.)
The level will be broken up into a few "segments". The first part of the level will be fairly open.
The first area will be the outskirts. Not too many structures, but it will feature our "Large" enemy, and some cargo ships.
I am going to look to have these guys burrowing and popping up to shoot at the player.
The rail will approach the transition area here. You will enter the tunnel shown.
Upon exiting the tunnel you will be face with the main construction area.
After this section you will be faced with some more industrial obstacles.
There are a few more things that I am planning on adding once enemies make an entrance, but the part after this is what will make this level stand out from the last. There is a branching route. Lana Kova will advise you to boost and slip in to a swinging tube.
Following her instruction will send you through a more secret route, where as missing the pipe will send you over the mountain.
Both routes will have their perks and their drawbacks.
Going over the mountains leaves you open to a lot more combat, and potentially less of an affinity growth with Lana.
Going through the pipe will bring you through the valleys of the mountain. I am hoping to have this route lead you to rendezvousing with Lana, and having her fight alongside you for a bit, but we'll see how that goes.
After these sections you will be brought to the boss which has not been put together yet, so it will need to wait for another week.
That pretty much covers the mapping progress of this week. There is still plenty to be done, but before I give a rundown on next week's plans.
I will touch upon the new characters and the poll. Alongside this post, I will be creating a poll for all VIP Crewmates ($10+) tier. The poll will likely last for 4 weeks, and the winner will be the featured character after the moon base, along with their corresponding planet.
Let the battle begin! I'm excited to see the results.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/v0-3-character-81183151
Now... What's planned for the upcoming week is pretty straight forward. Implementing all of the enemies and bringing loose ends together to be a cohesive level. I'll hopefully have a nice breakdown of more neat things the level has to offer next Friday! Thank you all so much for the support early on in development, and your feedback in the first build!
-Regulus
2023-04-07 15:38:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Here we are.. with the first hands on look at Starbreed. When playing, please do keep in mind this is still quite bare bones, and is mostly just meant to give people a feel what things will be like. There are still many features, mechanics, and QoL additions to be made. Some of the songs are placeholders (mainly in menus).
At the moment the controls are static, and cannot be changed (no keybinding yet!). They are as follows:
Mouse + Keyboard:
(Despite what you may first think, this is my recommended way of playing.)
Aiming: Mouse Movement.
Fire: LMB
Brake: RMB
Boost: MMB
Barrel Roll: X/C
Gamepad:
Aiming: Left Stick
Fire: Square/X
Brake: Cross/A
Boost: Circle/B
Barrel Roll: L/R Bumpers
Anyways! I hope you guys enjoy the first level with base gameplay. Next week will be the first character poll. That means 2 new characters will be announced to vote on! The next build will be based on the moon with our Merc character. I'll be sure to break it down on the neighboring post next week!
Heyo everyone! Here we are again. The last week has been a busy one. Just trying to really tie things together in a way that can really make the build a "demo" experience. I will likely reiterate this stuff on the actual build post, but certain components will be very incomplete (like sketches, and certain mechanics/features not being implemented). I will likely go over all the next things planned shortly after posting the build.
Without further ado, lets get down to the progress update!
First thing I did was program the scene loading/load screens.
Truly revolutionary, I know... It's just a black screen for now.
There were several other things that are quite minor that I won't go into to much detail involving menu navigation, and enemy routing. (As mentioned at the start of the post, this week had a good amount of just tying a lot of smaller things together to put it into a proper playable demo state).
I added a quick change to create a "cooldown" for using the thrust if you deplete it.
Once again... I worked on sound effects as well. This time involving the Hscene SFX. This brings on to another good chunk of this week. Putting together all the animation options and climax states.
Climax animation 1.
There will be some very simple options for changing up your character in this build. These options will likely have a pacing for being unlocked via H-stats, but in this build it will just be laid out as there is no progression yet.
In the Nova scene, there were some final animations done.
A quick animation for the tail state toggle. (You can choose to have this on or off at any point. All animations work dynamically with it's state.)
A bit of a small one, but I'm put the ol' lil "splat" from SpunkStock back in :P. The SFX to go along with it this time will be a little more "juicy"
I added a couple more loop variations as well. (Tail still needs to be given a bit of movement.)
And of course if you didn't notice.. there are also the climax animations and states.
I also added a little rotation to the level select hologram panel in the hub
I was hoping to have this build done by today, but there are still a couple more things to do. The build will almost surely be ready to go on the 1st still. I should still have this build wrapped up and sent to the team for testing in the next couple days.
Basically all I need to do is add a disclaimer at the start, add a little motion to Nova's tail/boobs in some animations, fix up some UI in the Hscenes, add some placeholder muffled music in the scorescreen/Hscenes, and fix up a couple things involving controls. Sounds like a decent amount, but it should only take a day or 2 to flesh out(I think).
1 more thing I am going to quickly put in is our projected comic style "cutscene". It is incomplete at the moment, but it essentially represents the transition between the end of the level, and Nova's Hscene. The image you see at the top of the post is a part of this. Most of it is still sketched in concepts, but will be done in time. Here are a couple more frames from it (There are about 10 in total):
These sketches + more will appear in the build to give context to the transition.
Anyways! With that covered, I'll get back to finishing this bad boy off. Provided things go as planned, I'll catch you on the 1st with a hands on demo. I'll be sure to update you all ASAP if that changes. AmHidden and BigFeff have already kicked off getting assets ready for the Moon level and the next build. Things are moving!
Another thing you may see change in the next bit is the project's name.
Thanks everyone! Catch you next week!
-Regulus
2023-03-25 03:15:36 +0000 UTC View Post
Heyo everyone! It's that time of week. The first early playable build is getting close, but there are still a few final things to do. The goal is to have this build wrapped up in the next week, so that we can do some quick internal testing before putting it up here on the 1st.
What you see above is a mock setup of the moon's environment/skybox(No structures/enemies obviously). That's all I'll show for the moon for now though. Without further ado, let's get in to this week's progress report!
Alright first thing that was pretty quick, but something that wasn't there yet was an actual player death explosion/animation.
I also created a few more SFX. Multiple for the game's score screen, and some "ambient" ones. The ship will emanate a subtle "hum". This isn't audible through the music, but breaks silence during moments of music transition, like the boss.
Another essential is the pausing.
The pause menu is unfinished, but will serve it's purpose for now.
Another thing you might notice is the change to the health bar. I upgraded some of the HUD in that sense. (While I was making the scorescreen.)
Through the game you can achieve different "medals". You can probably relate them to SpunkStock's C/B/A/S/SS ranking system. There aren't plans to have them used in the same way as S and SS tokens, but we will see as the game progresses. Each level will likely have their own thresholds for each medal.
Score will be translated into "Credits". Credits will not be usable for the first while until we implement the shop system, but they will likely be used for certain upgrades.
The 2 boxes on the right will represent the 2 allies you choose to bring with you on the mission. (I believe I mentioned before, but to recap, as you unlock characters, you will be able to add up to 2 of them to your party during missions. They will bring different perks depending on who you pick.)
As of this build there are no allies that can be unlocked, so they are left black.
Another thing that was added was the "Palace" in the background. You can see the structure straight ahead, but as you get farther in the level, it will get closer and closer. (In the story, this palace is your destination).
And finally the last bit that was done this week was setting up UI, and the background in the player's pod scene.
The UI is pretty "placeholder" at the moment, but I am just setting this scene up for the upcoming week.
That was the rundown for the week! In the upcoming week I am going to be focusing on adding some new things to both animations, polishing some SFX, maybe add a little victory jive to level completion, and fix up some scene transitions.
I am HOPING to have the build done by next Friday, so that I can send the build to the team and have them play through and check things over before the release here on April 1st.
Thanks everyone! I'm excited to get this preview out to you guys. I hope it sets a good first impression! I'll catch you all next week!
-Regulus
2023-03-17 23:45:06 +0000 UTC View PostAlright everyone! Since what I would consider to be a "build" is just about done, and the workload is a little more familiarized, I am going to be putting together a more solid development schedule for the team. I will be sure to cover the progress report for this week right after, but without further ado, let's get into it!
First thing I want to mention is that there is still a good chance the game's name may see changes. "Star Lust" is a more temporary name (Earlier I may have said we're going with that name, but we've since found reason to potentially change it a bit, and it's not too late to swap it up a bit).
------------
Next, what is the development schedule going to be like? Well the original goal was to have 2 month build cycles. I'll lay out the current plan as straight as possible:
April 1st:
Level: Catiya
Character: N/A
Hscenes: Nova Hscene, Pod Station
June 1st:
Level: Moon(unnamed)
Character: Mercenary (unnamed)
Hscenes: Merc 1, Merc 2.
August 1st:
Level: (Patreon poll decision)
Character: (Patreon poll decision)
Hscenes: 2 scenes with the determined character.
Oct 1st:
Patreon poll choice
cont...
When there is Catiya + 6 other planets released, we will likely cycle back, and make a 2nd level for each planet. In this 2nd phase, there will be no more new characters but each build will bring 2 more Hscenes to the character related to that planet. After that we will take on the Final Levels.
I'm moving forward with this as the planned schedule. I would REALLY like releases to be 2 months max, but if it seems too tough to pull off there is a possibility of reworking the scope, or extending build released.
With the release schedule keying in, I will be kicking things off, and get us out of this Patreon limbo. One big change in the Patreon that I believe I mentioned before, but if not I will say now: Patreon perks will be bumped up. "Build Access" will now be under the $5 tier, polls will be under $10, and art will be under $20. I'm making this change mostly due to the change in caliber of the project. There will be more people involved this time around, and the overall production is being stepped up. I'm sorry if this is upsetting to some people, but I hope when people get their hands on the game they will understand the difference from SpunkStock.
I will be changing the tier descriptions, and images to reflect this later this week.
That's the update on the project's cycle. Let's get things in order and push towards the future of Star Lust! Thanks everyone!
---------
Now on to the actual progress report of this week:
A bit unrelated to Star Lust: I spent the first portion of the week learning, and implementing Steam Achievements to SpunkStock. When I did this I also addressed a few bugs that had been reported and updated the game on Steam/Itch.io. If you have the game on Steam and want to grab some achievements, you now can!
Next I did a good amount of work on the boss transitions, and full sequence to the boss. (I was able to do so with the new Boss theme Wishful Simping worked up in the preview above!)
Added some effects on the falling building
Working on the intro sequencing for the boss
The song above has an "intro section" which plays during the dialogue. The game is synced to the audio queue. The song's main loop kicks in right when the boss says "FIRE!" and the speed picks up a lot.
I also increased the overall speed of the boss, and pushed him back a bit further.
With the massive speed increase for the boss fight, I needed to address a potential issue with boss fights. This is a bit more of a behind the scenes section for those who are curious, if you don't really care for it just skip past the "-------" section:
---------
An issue with using the rail system during boss fights is that all projectiles shot by the boss will have additive movement. (This means the missiles and lasers fly by you at mach 5 if you are moving at mach 5. Realistic, sure, but not ideal for gameplay) The player's projectiles will also have this effect. Going that fast, the player is moving almost the same speed as the lasers, making laser travel VERY delayed.
If you watch the missiles fired, you can see what I meant.
There was the option of making the environment move instead of using the rail system. This would make the player and the boss actually stationary, but give the impression of movement. The issue with this is that there may be some animations that would have to be catered to the fact that your stationary (Ex: the wing trail on the player would no longer have movement)
What I ended up doing was creating a bit of a hybrid solution. I created an Isolated form of game-space. I called it the "Scenic field". This space travels directly off of the rail system's X and Z position (Basically purely horizontal data).
This allows me to lock anything I want in to the horizontal localspace surrounding the player, and not have it effected by worldspace movement, player rotation, or player y value (vertical position).
I lock any projectiles from the boss, or player in this space, so that their speed will always remain consistent regardless of how fast the rail system is going, but keep things like the wing trails outside of it so that those DO pick up on the rail speed. Basically this allows me to pick and choose what objects I want effected, or not.
In fact, I took advantage of this space to create objects for a pseudo skybox effect in terms of environment. The mountains you see in the back of the boss fight stay stationary from your view point, but are actually texture-less hills at the tip of your draw distance.
Overall this system should have good integrity in the long-run for boss fights and the levels themselves, and will let me adapt to any big differences in speed/positioning/direction within them.
-------
ANYWAYS! With the carpet rolled out for development, I hope you are all looking forward to the future releases! What I have planned for the upcoming week is making final touches in the early versions of the menuing, putting together the last of the SFX for this build.
I'll catch you all next week, thanks a ton!
-Regulus
2023-03-10 20:22:57 +0000 UTC View Post
Heyo everyone! This week has been a bit of a weird one for me. It felt like it just kinda zoomed by. Definitely wasn't keeping track of days well. That being said! Some nice progress was made, and something really neat is that we went over some pretty cool ideas/concepts. I'll get into the progress report and may go over some of these!
Right out the gate I'm going to start with what was done first. The animation! In this scene there will likely be a lot of variances throughout the game, but for now, here are a few loops.
There are a couple more, but I won't flood the post with them. In the future you will likely be assisted by your comrades, not just the robo-hand ;).
I will also tinker with some other hair options, and facial expressions. I'm going to be treading very carefully in this aspect though for scope's sake.
NEXT!
I decided I wanted to up my game for Menuing/UI in Star Lust.
Here's an example of what the level selection UI may look like. I wanted things to be a little more thematic, and have a lot more animation and fluff to them. The character portrait shown when hovering will be whatever unlockable character represents that planet. (Catiya has no unlockable character, so it just shows the general).
Right now this is a very early rendition of the main menu screen, but here are some of the main button animations.
I have started setting up the bridges between scenes as a result of the UI work as well (menuing, to gameplay, and back)
I reallly wish I could showcase the SFX involved. I put together SFX for all of the menuing, along with many additional sounds in-game including: Barrel roll, deflecting lasers(during roll), Heal pick ups idle, and grabbing, better "miss" sounds (if you hit obstacles with lasers). I will likely be uploading an actual public announcement on this game in the very near future. The new SFX along with the music will be present in it.
Now there were some other small things I added as well:
>A slight screen shake when being hit. Nothing super distracting, but something really help register that you got clunk'd.
>I also actually went through and added colliders to all the buildings in the level (ya... there were no colliders yet ahah).
>I changed how the mouse controls work. This should allow the player to adjust sensitivity, and it should also allow the mouse to properly lock in WebGL(browser), and other OS builds.
>Reworked some of the enemy's positioning along with refining/tuning in on better dialogue trigger positions.
>Set up a script for scaling an image in the background as you progress (This is potentially for something I may showcase next week.)
>Made the simple system for Ally chases to address success, or failure.
FAIL:
SUCCESS:
In this instance upon success the ally will shoot down an enemy fighter for you. Failure will cause them to leave, and the support is not given. How helpful the ally is may change depending on the level or situation!
The gif compression puts some nasty grit on some of these images. I can definitely say the game looks much more crystal clear ahaha.
-----PLANNING?----
With that said, the team has spent a good amount of time discussing upcoming things, and getting organized for the next level. You might be thinking "2nd level? We hardly know anything about the 1st!" Well.... you're right. There is still a decent amount for me to finish up and polish in the first level, but while I finish these things up, it is an ideal time for the other members to get the concepts and modelling done for the second level, so we can jump right in when the time comes.
I likely won't share too much on the next level at this time, but I will say that it is a "moon" level, and it will bring the first unlockable ally.
At the moment just nicknamed "The Merc" during development. She will be the character associated with the moon level. We have the concepts for the level done up, and our modeller has started working on textures and environment models for it.
Once the moon level is in production, that is likely when I will be putting polls back on the map, and getting this patreon page running in proper flow like with SpunkStock. All characters after "The Merc" will be decided by polls. As mentioned before there are plans for a total of 6 unlockable characters.
This means after "The Merc" there will be 5 more characters to come. There are less characters than there was in SpunkStock, but this is so we can have more scenes/interactions with each character.
Some things that were also discussed, which I WON'T go in to detail yet (I just really want to say). Amhidden has drawn up detailed concepts for 3 of the other characters, and I got to say... they are sick, and I can't wait for the polls to come, where they will be announced.
A lot of these last few months have really been about fleshing out what a "typical build" consists of in terms of the development cycle of builds. With the first level and the core coming together, there is some final decisions to make on how to proceed with the development and the pacing of builds.
Alright guys! This was a bit of a loaded one, but I hope it's ignited a bit more excitement for the game. In this next week I will likely be focusing on polishing, and fixing up/balancing a few things. There are a few game design choices I need to nail down and decide on as well. I will likely also be setting up the Hscene reviewing/gallery system.
I guess you could say I am going to be pushing to get the last of what I'd consider "a build" done. That doesn't necessarily mean the build will be released right away, but I will be thinking a lot about how I want to handle builds in these early stages here.
Thanks everyone! I'll catch you next week! ^^
-Regulus
2023-03-03 19:52:21 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey everyone! This week I finished the baseline animations for Nova's scene, and got started on the Player's Hscene. I haven't shown this one yet, but this Hscene will be a bit unique compared to most.
Before I get in to the progress report, I want to say that SpunkStock has been submitted, and accepted to appear in Hentai Expo 2023 in April. For those who weren't here last year, Hentai Expo is a live stream that showcases a bunch of new and upcoming Hgames. It was a ton of fun to hang out in chat while our game, and so many others were showcased. I highly recommend checking it out this year if it interests you! Here is a link to their Twitter. You can find the information you need there.
With that, let's get in to what's been going on this week. First off, I added a climax animation to Nova's scene.
and I made sure to cause the state to animate with the loops.
This animation has been taking a bit longer than usual because I've been using it to experiment with new ways of approaching certain things. There are still a few more loops, and animations I want to do with this scene, but with the base animations done, swapped to the next animation, and will likely come back to it.
This leads to the Player Character scene. This scene will be the main source where I will be playing with the idea of the Player Character being able to choose their form (as I mentioned fairly early on).
Unlike other scenes, this scene will take place in the hub. It will also likely be where you go to access the game's "Gallery Mode" when it's implemented. You can either choose to view scenes, or do things in this chair.
This will be where I am going to be testing the extent of potential character customization, and in the future we will also likely try testing the idea of "inviting other characters" to join you in the chair. There are still several things to flesh out with this scene, but that's kind of the point of it. We can add to it, and make it more interesting as time goes on.
Out the gate you will likely be able to tinker with the idea of having male, female, and androgynous features.
There may be more options like a more feminine hair style. The idea is that the character is a race that can change their state depending on situations. I have many ideas on how to flesh it out, but know that your customization here may or may not carry over to the other scenes in the game. How far we take the customization is still pending, as we don't want it to have a bad effect on the scope of the game.
As of right now, this is meshed, and rigged up. In this upcoming week I will be doing the base animations for it. It will be quite simple at first, but ideally this will be a scene that grows over time.
With that, I will get back to it! Thanks for the continued support everyone! There is plenty to sort out, but we'll get there! I'll catch you all next week with some motion on this scene, and perhaps some more news on the direction/layout for the game.
-Regulus
Hey hey everyone! This week was almost entirely dedicated to the animation, but I did take a day to work on some in-game things. That being said, I'll hop right in.
What you see above is a standard loop. I am hoping to add some decent variations in each animation.
Here is the basic Idle animation
On top of that we have a "Harder" animation.
This one is not quite done yet. The main character's motion isn't quite done, but it is close.
There may be 1 or 2 other loops, and some side things. I want both animations to cater to variation in "tail state", so the player can choose whether to have the tail engulfing, or not.
These aren't animated yet, but there will likely be a transition animation like this.
You may notice the goopy bits. This time around we are going to be taking a bit of a different approach. This time it will be drawn in a different style, and perhaps overall treated differently than in SpunkStock. I do still plan on animating it though.
At the moment the Hscenes are just viewing, similar to sandbox/alt scenes in SpunkStock. I do want to experiment with ways to make them a little more interesting than just viewing though. Whether it be something like building affinity with characters, or something interactive, but we will see.
Now for the in-game things.
A decent amount of it was dealing with Shaders. I put together a hologram shader for the "Level Select". These are all using the same planet/asset, so they will look more unique when all the actual planets are in, but this is an example of what I would like the level select to look like.
Next was implementing "health packs" in to the level for heals.
Close up:
and the last thing I did was put together a shader to fade objects close to the camera by dithering.
There are a good amount of places in the level where the camera can/will clip through objects, so I waned to ensure those objects wouldn't feel intrusive when it happens.
That pretty much sums up this week. I was hoping to be a little farther in this Hscene's animations, but at a point I had to take a step back and think about possible changes coming from SpunkStock's animations. There are still some things I want to think about/figure out, but I am hoping to have this animation all finished up, and have started on the 2nd Hscene by next post.
There is still a lot of work to do on this build. I honestly would like to get you guys a build, so you can get a feel for what the game will actually be like sooner rather than later. I can't say for sure when I'll feel good about putting up a Patreon release, but unless I decide to hold off, I feel like by the end of March is a possibility to at least try out the first level, and the Hscenes.
I'll continue working towards that goal!
Anyways... thanks everyone for being here even though you still haven't had the chance to play Star Lust (and just having faith in us). I'll catch you all next week with some more animation!
-Regulus.
2023-02-18 05:47:31 +0000 UTC View PostHeyo everyone! Another progress update in bound! It's nice to get back on to familiar territory with the animation process, and the feel of the level is really starting to come together with the music in there now. Without further ado, lets get in to this last week's progress!
Starting off, as you can see in the preview above, Wishful has finished the first song of the game. This will play during the level of Catiya (planet name may be subject to change). I wish I could post videos directly to these posts without using a 3rd party embedding (so I could showcase the music alongside the game).
First thing I did this week was add dialogue sequencing and the outro for the boss fight.
It's a bit jagged, and will use some touching up, but this is the groundwork for it.
Next up is some small additions from our 3D modeller, BigFeff.
This is a pretty basic scene, and it has a good amount of work to be done.
The plan for this scene is Level select. I am hoping to add a "Hologram" type shader to the planets, and have them display, spinning like this while you select what planet/level to play. As mentioned before, this scene is very barebones, and I will likely be putting it together after I am done with the Hscene animations.
Speaking of Hscenes, there has been slight changes to the Nova Hscene, and it has been meshed.
The tail has been reworked, and now has multiple states. (I don't have the control parameters set up yet, so I can't give the best demonstration yet).
The colors are a bit wonky in the AnyPortrait inspector due to it being done in the URP. Here is more what the colors will look like in the scene. (The layers are all folding on top of each other because the states aren't set yet)
For those unfamiliar with what I mean by "meshing". Basically the process of these animations is that AmHidden will send a full static image to me with a couple "variations". I then break up the image in to a bunch of small segments. (often about 50-150 pieces depending on how complicated it is.) I then manually "add vertices to each section like this.
It takes a little while, but it's all a part of the process.
Another thing I've done is fix up some of the shader layering in the game. There's a small chance you noticed it in earlier gifs I have posted. This might be a bit of a boring spec, but I'll tack it on here.
OLD:
Notice the green reticle fades as it displays over the water. Enemy explosions also sometimes got very suppressed when they died over the water through the camera view. Shaders render in a bit of a different queue. In this case, the water's shader would render last making it appear over everything... oops! I'm pretty new to shaders so this is fairly new stuff to me.
NEW:
Basically I just learned to set queues up properly for shaders. I also changed the reticles to be rendered on a stack camera to ensure they will always appear over everything.
Alright, that pretty much sums up this week! In the next week, I will likely be focusing completely on Nova's Hscene. I am hoping to have the animation done for next post.
Sorry if the post seemed a bit busy. I feel like I could make them more brief if people feel like they are too long, but I like to show things when I can rather than just saying "hey.. i did this".
Thanks everyone for sticking around for Star Lust! I'll catch you all next week with some motion in Nova's Hscene!
-Regulus